Feb 16, 2025

 Gulf of Mexico.

The White House (i.e. tRump) has single-handedly renamed it The Gulf of America.

FOX News immediately saluted and started using the trumped name.

But it has been called The Gulf of Mexico for more than 400 years.

—The Washington Post also said it would use Gulf of Mexico in most references because it “is not solely within the United States’ jurisdiction and the name of Gulf of America might confuse global readers.” 

I'll stick with tradition:

Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico  (etc etc etc)

Washington Post Story: Alabama Plant Cited

It was the deadliest workplace in America. So why didn’t safety regulators shut it down?

Inspectors issued more than 100 safety violations and millions in fines. Yet deaths and injuries continued.

PHENIX CITY, ALA.

The police lieutenant sounded unnerved as he stepped inside the old lumber mill. The power was off. The giant saws were quiet. But the smell of fresh sawdust still hung in the humid summer air. In the darkened factory, sunlight streamed through jagged holes in the rusted metal walls as Lt. Marc Cutt walked across a machine that turned logs into lumber.

“Has it been rendered safe?” Cutt asked another police officer as his body camera recorded the scene.

“Safe is a relative term in this place,” the officer responded.

The police knew this place well. So did federal safety inspectors.

FULL Washington Post Story is HERE.

 

Some Mostly GOP Members of Congress Want to defund NPR & Public TV

 Protect My Public Media

Alabama: 24 people killed by police in 2024. In Texas? 165!

 


Which areas of the US had the highest number of police officers killed on duty?

Sixty-six officers were killed in the South, more than twice the rate of any other region. The South also has roughly double the amount of law enforcement officers than any other region, according to BLS employment data. Additionally, the southern region of the US also has a larger population compared to the other regions of the US.

This map displays police violence by state, considering the number of people killed by law enforcement in each U.S. state in 2024.

Feb 14, 2025

From The Cato Institute

 

A growing measles outbreak in Gaines County, Texas—24 cases so far in a county that voted 91 percent for Donald Trump—illustrates a grim irony.

Senate Republicans voted in favor of anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the secretary of health and human services. (And as a result...) Republican families will suffer.

In the 1960s, measles struck 3–4 million US residents annually, leading to nearly 500,000 diagnoses, 48,000 hospitalizations, and 400–500 deaths. By 2000, measles cases had fallen to fewer than 100 per year, striking only when travelers—mostly, unvaccinated US citizens—brought it home from abroad.

(Both of Alabama's GOP Senators voted in favor of Kennedy.)

Kennedy is Rolling over in his grave.

 tRump is now Chairman of the Board of the Kennedy Center:

In an explanation to reporters, Trump said he had not been to the center previously because “there was nothing (I) wanted to see.”

“We have, I guess, a whole new group of people going in . . . and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke,” Trump added.


 

Feb 13, 2025

As Reported by Military.com

 This will be of interest to the U.S. Air Force personnel at The Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery:

"The Department of the Air Force will no longer set ambitious goals to diversify the officer applicant pool, the latest initiative to be scrapped by the service as a result of President Donald Trump's executive orders aiming to rid the military of policies he disagrees with.

In 2022, the service set out to update its diversity goals -- an aspirational benchmark -- to get more applicants to the Air Force Academy and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or ROTC. It marked the first time in a decade that the service had amended those targets. Republicans had pushed back against the program in recent years, claiming it was a left-leaning initiative."

 

GOP Quandry

 tRump quote:

 


“Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. You know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said.   

Oh yea, THAT'S what your supporters were thinking when they elected you. Right.

CHOP CHOP.

126 Years Ago Today

 Coldest Temperature in Alabama ever: 

-5 on February 13th, 1899


 

Feb 12, 2025

Uh Veterans Being Used?

 

After Ivey fired Alabama Veterans Affairs commissioner lawmakers may give her control of department

Great Turnout in Montgomery

 There was a great turnout for The Montgomery Art Guild show!


 

 


 

From The NY Times...Sure Cut The Budget...just not MINE!!!

 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R)

".....shrinking the size of the federal government will be a mammoth task, despite the G.O.P.’s posture of maximum deference to Mr. Trump.

Take Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, the successor to Senator Richard C. Shelby, who retired in 2022 at age 88 as one of the last big-time pork barrel legends in Congress. Mr. Shelby, Ms. Britt’s former boss, was renowned for his record of steering billions of dollars in federal spending to his state over a 36-year career.

Ms. Britt was one of the first Republicans to raise concerns at home soon after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research grantees, a move that has since been paused by a federal judge. Ms. Britt, whose state has received more than $518 million in N.I.H. grants for projects currently active there, told a local news outlet that she would press administration officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions” such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham."

Feb 9, 2025

A company that owns two Alabama Newspapers and many others hit by Cyberattack.

Lee Enterprises owns 77 daily newspapers in 26 states, and more than 350 weekly, classified, and specialty publications has been hit by a cyberattack.

 

In Alabama, the company owns The Dothan Eagle and The Opelika-Auburn News.

NY Times report:

Newspapers published by Lee Enterprises reported on the cyberattack and said that most of the problems began on Monday morning. Each newspaper included details about how the attack had stifled their operations. It was not clear if the issues had been resolved on Sunday.

Mail for the dead

An interesting Washington Post story today about a Post Office in Japan that distributes mail intended for the dead...including dead pets:

"The Missing Post Office is on the island of Awashima, one of thousands in the Seto Inland Sea, which sits between Japan’s main southern islands."

One example: 

"To Ron [the dog] in heaven

​​Hi, are you doing well?

​​Are you going on a lot of walks?

​​Were you able to see Dad?

​​If you do, make sure you get a lot of sausages from him.

​​See you again someday, and be well."


New Mural on Lee Street Downtown by French Street Artists


 




 
Read More about the art and the artists HERE in The Montgomery Independent. 

Media--(Updated)

 


("This story was updated to meet our standards.")

 

That notice was included at the top of a story in The Montgomery Advertiser on Saturday, and I believe I have never see a similar element in the paper. 

 

It is so vague it caught my attention. I'll ask about it.

(UPDATE: I emailed the reporter on Saturday, but have not received a reply as of  Thursday 2-13)

What I want to know: Just what about the original story failed to meet the paper's standards?

Feb 8, 2025

The Billboard Montgomery's Mayor Reed Doesn't Want You To See

(This billboard is one in the series, in Mississippi)

 

Tracy Martin, daughter of Spider Martin (who took the photo used on the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts billboard), told Hyperallergic that she had given permission to For Freedoms Co-Founder Hank Willis Thomas to use the iconic photograph as part of an ongoing collaboration. She disagreed with the mayor’s decision" (to take down the billboard), "calling it a “violation of freedom of speech.” 

“These boards ask the question: When was America great?” Martin said in a statement to Hyperallergic last week. “The MAGA slogan has been clear for many years, and as far as we know, the person who coined it doesn’t think America is great now but rather that it was great during some other time in the past.”

(From a column on the website www.hyperallegic)

The Mayor's letter said that while Reed removed the design because he believed it wrongfully politicized the Selma marches, others may have appreciated the parallels the billboard drew between civil rights struggles and current events.

WHAT? Politics involved in the the civil rights struggle???? I'm shocked!

tRump on global affairs


 

(From a CNN story:)

On more issues than one, Trump’s global honeymoon appears to be over. And if Western countries needed a reminder of the tumult he can inject into global affairs, they have it.

“The Biden administration tried very hard to be reliable and predictable” on the world stage, (Jon B. Alterman (director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank said.) “The Trump administration has exactly the opposite instinct.” 

Source: HERE.

 

 


Feb 7, 2025

Trump & Religion


 

Trump Signs Order to Fight ‘Anti-Christian Bias’

The president convened a task force to “prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism.” Critics said he’d turned religious freedom on its head by singling out one faith.

NY Times STORY headline

  • QUESTION: Does anyone really believe there is discrimination against Christianity or Christians in Alabama?
  • Feb 6, 2025

    Remembering my Arrival in 'Nam

    No photo description available.
          When I arrived in 'Nam, in 1970, I knew the name of the place where I was being stationed, but not exactly where it was. A map like the one above was posted nearby, so I started searching, from the south where we had landed, and looking upwards.

    Eventually, just before ran out of South Vietnam geography, I spotted it: Quang Tri, virtually ON the DMZ.
    Welcome to 'Nam! 😎

    Feb 5, 2025

    N.Y. Times story

     

    With Gaza Plan, an Unbound Trump Pushes an Improbable Idea

    Once a critic of nation building, the president now envisions taking over a Middle East enclave, driving out its Palestinian population and transforming it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

    <clip> 

    “Is he talking in geopolitical terms, or does he simply see Gaza as a massive beachfront development project?” Mr. Elgindy (Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies) asked. “And for whose benefit? Certainly not Palestinians, who are to be ‘relocated’ en masse. Will the U.S. be the new occupier in Gaza, replacing the Israelis? What U.S. interest could this possibly serve?”

    FULL STORY is HERE.

    Feb 4, 2025

    Our Golden Era

     From former Alabama State Rep. Perry Hooper's column:

    "As the sun set on Washington, it was clear that this was more than a transition of power; it was the dawn of a golden era. The energy is unstoppable, the momentum undeniable. President Trump’s return marked not just a political shift but the resurgence of an unstoppable movement — ushering in a golden era where America’s greatness would no longer be a dream, but a destiny."

    ===============================================

    Who knew (other than Hooper?)

    If nothing else, it should get Hooper a nice spot in the tRump2 White House.

    Watch out for chaos on Montgomery's Carter Hill Road!

     Trust me it is A MESS out there!

    Water Main Replacement Set to Alter Carter Hill Road Traffic Flow

    MONTOGMERY, Alabama - Drivers will see a change in the flow of traffic along Carter Hill Road starting today.

    The westbound lane of Carter Hill Rd. between Gillespie Dr. and West St. will be closed as Montgomery Water Works and Sanitary Sewer Board carries out water main replacement activities.

    The detour route will be Robison Hill Road to East 5th St. to Mulberry St.

    The road will be closed to traffic during daytime hours, but will be opened to traffic at night. 

    Crews will be working from approximately 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the project is expected to last roughly 8-10 weeks, depending on weather and other factors. 

    Your patience and caution as you travel the area is appreciated while the work is carried out.  

    Screenshot 2025-01-28 132256

    Feb 2, 2025

    Breakfast? Stay Away from Montgomery

     AL.COM article headline:

    14 Alabama breakfast spots worth waking up early for

    (NONE in Montgomery, let me point out)

    Pastor Departing

     You may remember this event in 2020:

    BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — The Housing Authority Birmingham District (HABD) Board of Commissioners voted on Monday to end its partnership with Church of the Highlands (COTH) due to recent social media controversy involving the church pastor, Chris Hodges.

    Pastor Hodges recently submitted a public apology to his church members after “liking” social media posts that were perceived as racist and offensive to people in the African-American community.

    HABD Board of Commissioners felt that Pastor Hodges’ views did not reflect those of HABD and its residents.

     

     

    Today, Hodges left the church because of what they are calling a "moral failing", reportedly a relationship with a woman who is not his wife. 

    AL.COM reports: All references to Michael Hodges were removed from the church's web site in September and his social media accounts were deactivated. Since Sept. 25, Charles Kelly has been listed on the church web site as the pastor of the Greystone campus.